The Value of a Liberal Arts Education in Landing a Job

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory made waves when he said on syndicated radio that he wants to encourage the funding of four-year programs that align with the job market — not those, like gender studies, that do little to help a graduate’s employment prospects.

This was covered in a pointed column for The Wall Street Journal by Jane Shaw, the president of the John William Pope Center of Higher Education Policy in Raleigh, N.C. Shaw supports McCrory’s attempt to roil the higher education establishment and get students — heaven forbid — thinking about job prospects when they pick a major:

Referring specifically to North Carolina’s 16-campus state university system, Mr. McCrory wondered if state funding incentives should encourage areas of study that align with the job market. Other disciplines, such as gender studies, Mr. McCrory said, might be subsidized less. The funding formula, he said perhaps a bit indelicately, should not be based on the number of “butts in seats, but how many of those butts can get jobs.”

The education establishment immediately went bonkers. The pundits piled on. But Mr. McCrory raised a legitimate concern. And the solution he proposed, sketchy as it is at this stage, is not a bad one.

The truth is: Elite universities, such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, are doing a disservice when they lead students into majors with few, if any, job prospects. Stating such truths doesn’t mean you’re antagonistic to the liberal arts.

This discussion — and the one we contributed to last year after Viriginia Postrel’s column for Bloomberg — got us thinking: just how valuable is a liberal arts education in landing a job and contributing in the business world? Because EMSI works with so many community and technical colleges, we’re all for matching educational programs to in-demand fields. (In fact, we’ve developed a tool, Career Coach, that does just that.) For schools that specialize in offering associate’s and certificate programs, data-driven program assessment makes sense — and it helps students, colleges, and the regions that colleges serve.

But what about universities like the University of North Carolina, which McCrory chose to use an example? It’s much trickier to link gender studies, history, or some other liberal arts degree to an actual career. But these graduates — in theory — are getting a more well-rounded education than they would get at a vocational school, and they should have the critical thinking, analytical, and writing skills valuable in the marketplace.

Or do they?

In criticizing American higher education institutions, Shaw writes, “Many liberal-arts graduates, even from the best schools, aren’t getting jobs in large part because they didn’t learn much in school. They can’t write or speak well or intelligently analyze what they read.” If this is the case, these students are bound to get a poor education regardless of what they major in.

However, as Postrel mentioned in her column last year, the students who flow into well-regarded schools and the majors that result in well-paying jobs, like some STEM degrees, “have the aptitudes, attitudes, values and interests that draw them to those fields (which themselves vary greatly in content and current job prospects).” And as Anthony Carnevale at Georgetown showed in a study last year, the unemployment rate for graduates of certain scientific or technical fields isn’t any better, and sometimes it’s worse, than the rate for graduates who major in education or the humanities (see above chart).

We looked at completions data from the National Center for Education Statistics to get a sense of the top educational programs for graduates from 2003 to 2011 among all award levels. First, here’s the top 10 programs in the U.S. Liberal arts comes in second — just under 50,000 completions short of business administration — while psychology, cosmetology, and general studies are also hugely popular.

But what’s striking is to look at the same chart for North Carolina. Notice the huge growth in liberal arts degrees — from 4,111 in 2003 to 8,778 in 2011. And since the recession, the rate of students graduating in liberal arts fields has picked up, not slowed down like you might think.

Based on this data, perhaps McCrory has a point. North Carolina has far outpaced the nation in terms of the proportion of liberal arts degree it awards. But the real question in this debate is, what kind of education are these students getting? If it’s as lousy as Shaw depicts, and if they’re not aggressively pursuing internships and other career-advancing opportunities while in school, many of these graduates are in for a tough time no matter what.

Joshua Wright is an editor at EMSI, an Idaho-based economics firm that provides data and analysis to workforce boards, economic development agencies, higher education institutions, and the private sector. He manages the EMSI blog and is a freelance journalist. Contact him here.

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The value of a job is as important as the value of education. Without proper or right education we can't go for a suitable job; therefore from the beginning we used to make our base strong through effective and better education. But due to commercialization we have found that education system and policy is completely changed; most of the organization are serving education for commercial purpose only. The importance of education is really essential for every individual and no matter whatever the stream is arts, science or finance. But according to survey we have found students belong to science and finance background are getting more opportunities on better jobs.http://www.certifiedcoaches.com/blog/career-coach-always-room-grow/

It is good to have this opportunity to read a good quality content with useful and interesting information on this topic. I agree with your conclusion and waiting for your future update. Thanks a lot and keep posting valuable information.

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The importance of education is quite essential for the society as well as for the people. Therefore we have found that day by day people were working to develop their current education system as well as facilities. The value of education is rapidly falls day by day; as we have found various kinds of loopholes to develop the education system of our society.

And as Anthony Carnevale Georgetown showed in a study last year, the unemployment rate for graduates of some scientific or technical fields is no better, and sometimes worse, than the rate of graduates who major in education or the humanities http://www.dumpsnow.com/dumps/N10-005.php

Education policy rapidly changes in every sectors; it ultimately puts a biggest impact in the employment structure. Mostly our career depends upon quality of education system, so with the help of modern education system we are able to maintain a better job environment. In the above article we have found certain graphical structure that describe the current education and employment system of the country, no doubt we have found a mixed result but still we need to develop our education system and policy which present a better education environment.

In modern era value of education is very increased and everybody want to get higher education. You are ready more about it from this essay poweredessays.com and i hope you will share with others as well.

The criticizing point by the American higher education institutions regarding arts students is absolutely right.Rather then only confined to a major subjects the other important subjects should not be denied which are compulsory for your essaythinkerpractical life .

Very interesting article no doubt everybody needs a good and highly paying jobs and that is all depend on the professional qualification acquired by a student from a good institute.But on the other hand this should not the only motive of parents as well as the teachers. Moreover the overall development of the child is important. www.assignmentshelptutors.com

A job is something that every person looks for. Whether you are a fresher or a person already having work experience a job is always a matter of keen interest.
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More often than not, we tend to surpass the distinguishable profits that we accomplished simply by not taking to account some of the students might have wanted to share to your company, business or admin works. Like me, I have a liberal arts background and the intellectualism that it promoted did prepare me for a lifetime of learning and a variety of possible career paths.---- Jilly Monroe Writer

Why are we making education about employability? Education should be for one's own self-betterment. Not everyone is looking for the highest paying job. There are still people in the world who want to do what they love regardless of the salary. The senator's comments are only further evidence that the American Education system is structured like an assembly line; shove a bunch of subjugated "knowledge" in kids heads and then throw them into the job market so that everyone can keep buying more shit they don't need.

My question to Joshua is: Are these folks being employed competitively in the fields they graduated in? It is one thing to be a secretary or handle the mailroom, then to be employed in a career of something you went to school for. I know many of my friends have degrees in athletic training, paramedics, and psychology, and they are employed doing slightly above menial labor for minimum wage in something other then that which they went to school for.

It used to be that these college grads did not wrestle with high schoolers for the same jobs, but now, at some firms, a bachelor is required to do work high-schoolers used to be able to do, while high-schoolers leave k-12 with poor math, reading, writing, & life skills. I think the education industrial complex would prefer that educators dumb down the standards for the masses so that people will have to over-qualify and specialize in broad but pointless specialty's in our new aimless meritocracy... all the while keeping the people who will be providing the qualifications & specializations employed. At Portland State, they have a model that has killed the gender studies as a main concentration, but... they have reincorporated gender courses as one of the main cluster-of-courses that freshmen & sophmores are required to take. The days of the studies as a focus may be over, but they aren't going without a fight, and the PSU model is being exported to many Universities across the nation. The University will remain a left-wing seminary, even if your major is computer science or health infomatics.
Freshman Inquiry:http://www.pdx.edu/unst/freshman-inquiry
View clusters here:http://www.pdx.edu/unst/sophomore-inquiry-upper-division-clusters